"In May, Iím starting to work for the Blender Institute again. Besides maintenance, bug fixing, release work, etc, my big target will be modernizing the shading and render system. We havenít worked out the exact plans, but this is roughly what I have in mind:"

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Wow sure is exciting, I have been hoping for the render system to be more developed in Blender......

A dumbbell made for speed modeling, 1 hour.
Added a blog again to my site, I actually think it works better now for some reason.
Perhaps I should look at things long term and not in a quick solution way.

QD, came back to edit/say (as I meant to): always interesting/exotic 3D forms
and the colours best of all (and ZM beat me to it, hehe). I don't always have
enough free headspace to 'be social' but I notice prettymuch every lapse
(fixing them is another issue). Kudos.
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Hi Mathew, its good to see you back on the forum again. I know how you feel about settling on a direction for your art. I got back into 3D again after a long gap when I spoke to a guy from a small game studio in Canada. They were really keen on hiring a concept artist but wanted someone who could help out on the 3D side from time to time since there might not be enough work to justify a full-time 2D artist. I had no 3D work to show and its not a position I wish to be in anymore since I know i can do this if I put my mind to it and learn. Doing a 3D project is not going to make me a worse 2D artist, quite the contrary, I feel to some degree, that the two disciplines are mutually beneficial and that just because a 2D artist refuses to look into 3D that does not inherently make them a better 2D artist and the guy who is exploring 3D not. There are interesting avenues for design in 3D that maybe one would dismiss if they were working only in a 2D space. Its all good stuff as far as I`m concerned A few wip shots below I really hope I can get this thing finished, I'm trying to get a high poly look with a mid poly topology, something that would sit well in a game engine. Looking forward to the texturing and lighting phase. Apologies for such a rant, your 3D concepts are very interesting

T_England, Hey nice to see you again man and thank you for the comment and the welcome.
Funny this that I seem to be getting back and forth from this forum, maybe all a part of the process...?
Not sure if you have been following my blog but the goal was and perhaps is to make a better foundation in work with a 3d base and then polish the intended piece with 2d.
There's a real steep learning curve with 3d though, many different of them as such aswell, concept, posing and detailing that takes almost too much time on a lamens terms activity to learn properly. This at the same time makes the direction confusing cause you might wanna break down some elements in the scene, harder with 3d to do that easy....hmm.... I found the detailing being limited with blender, they will make this better in the next version though so I really look forward to the next Blender update.
Bmesh will be added, with that you will be able to divide one polygon into several vertices without effecting the next polygon on the side. I do hope I have understood this right though lol....

Yea it seems that it is perhaps better to be good at a lot of trades in the gaming industry. Is this a new trend? Some artists are even coding their own scripts, especially in 3d....

I agree with you here with working in both 2d and 3d, there's much to gain from both I believe.
Love the sandbuggy you have here, is this a concept all the way?
I have found it difficult to just come up with different details from head, that's why I started with these concepts and sculpting and let the other projects lay dorment for now....

i agree with what you guys are saying, but have always sortof bumped a wall when i wanted to learn 3d. I do my dummy sketchup architecture models sometimes, but i wanna beable to build cars and spaceships dammit! Once i downloaded blender and sortof sat slackjawed staring at the console- any good learning resources/simple tutorials? (i know, i know, prolly a google search away)

Hi guys, very cool concept model Mathew I do check your blog from time to time I agree about the learning curve and it is incredibly time consuming, I used the packages quite a lot in 04-08 while at uni so that probably helped. Its amazing how much faster it is to sketch and paint though which is part of the reason i stopped 3D in the first place lol.

The dune buggy I started with some quick drawings, not very pretty.

I gathered a ton of photo reference that helps a lot as its quite a methodical process. Most of it is using basic tools such as cut, extrude edge, merge to center, insert edge loop and constraints and snaps, i think its called edge extrusion method? Most of the tools can be accessed using right-click gestures, it helps becoming familiar with the few tools that you will use a lot and the basics of poly modeling. This is in Maya btw, not used blender much

Lemur, at first just make it a practise like a speedpainting. I found out about the learning curve that it is good to just make your mind up about what you wanna model and then try to learn things as you go along with the project. Well lol I do approach things in the wrong order I believe, these days I just keep getting worse no matter what I do.

durgl, yea Bmesh is gonna be sweet, in April we'll find out if it meets the expectations. It sure as hell gonna make modeling easier for me anyway. I wanna build a simple mesh and then add details, with Bmesh that is gonna be possible without looping everything. Can't hardly wait....

a concept I was messing around with, don't think it will work that well as a vehicle....